Yeah, but who is speaking here? Beckstead? I don’t know any “Beckstead”s. Phil Torres is claiming that The Longtermist Stance is “we should prioritise the lives of people in rich countries over those in poor countries”, even though I’ve never heard EAs say that. At most Beckstead thinks so, though that’s not what Beckstead said. What Beckstead said was provisional (“now seems more plausible to me”) and not a call to action. Torres is trying to drag down discourse by killing nuance and saying misleading things.
Torres’ article is filled with misleading statements, and I have made longer and stronger remarks about it here. (Even so I’m upvoting you, because −6 is too harsh IMO)
Yes the article is indeed full of strawmen and misleading statements. But (not knowing anything about Torres) I felt the top comment was strongly violating the principle of charity when trying to understand the author’s motivations.
I think the principle of charity is very important (especially when posting on a public forum), and saying that someone’s true motivations are not the ones they claim should require extraordinary proof (which maybe is the case! I don’t know anything about the history of this particular case).
Extraordinary proof? This seems too high to me. You need to strike the right balance between diagnosing dishonesty when it doesn’t exist and failing to diagnose it when it does. Both types of errors have serious costs. Given the relatively high prevalence of deception among humans (see e.g. this book), I would be very surprised if requiring “extraordinary proof” of dishonesty produced the best consequences on balance.
Yeah, but who is speaking here? Beckstead? I don’t know any “Beckstead”s. Phil Torres is claiming that The Longtermist Stance is “we should prioritise the lives of people in rich countries over those in poor countries”, even though I’ve never heard EAs say that. At most Beckstead thinks so, though that’s not what Beckstead said. What Beckstead said was provisional (“now seems more plausible to me”) and not a call to action. Torres is trying to drag down discourse by killing nuance and saying misleading things.
Torres’ article is filled with misleading statements, and I have made longer and stronger remarks about it here. (Even so I’m upvoting you, because −6 is too harsh IMO)
Yes the article is indeed full of strawmen and misleading statements.
But (not knowing anything about Torres) I felt the top comment was strongly violating the principle of charity when trying to understand the author’s motivations.
I think the principle of charity is very important (especially when posting on a public forum), and saying that someone’s true motivations are not the ones they claim should require extraordinary proof (which maybe is the case! I don’t know anything about the history of this particular case).
Extraordinary proof? This seems too high to me. You need to strike the right balance between diagnosing dishonesty when it doesn’t exist and failing to diagnose it when it does. Both types of errors have serious costs. Given the relatively high prevalence of deception among humans (see e.g. this book), I would be very surprised if requiring “extraordinary proof” of dishonesty produced the best consequences on balance.